The [Fannie Mae] "seriously delinquent" rate has gone parabolic, increasing by roughly 5% sequentially and just under 300% YoY [year-over-year]. As mere text will simply not do this metric justice, please enjoy this chart of the dataset from Blytic. It tells you all you need to know about the Fed's containment of the housing problem.

The August seriously delinquent single-family number comprised of a 2.87% non-credit enhanced delinquencies and a very bothersome 11.52%, consisting of credit enhanced loans... The deterioration of FNM's book however did not stop it from increasing the size of its book [loans]. In September Fannie's total book of business hit $3.242 trillion, up from $3.229 trillion in August and $3.079 trillion in the prior year...

...This trend should bother you, dear taxpayer, because it is your money on the hook here, which is not only massively mismanaged by Bernanke & Co., LLC, but which sees another $80 billion of free funding every month courtesy of the dollar printing press to onboard even more toxic garbage onto your balance sheet.

Second, it's an outright financial scam authored by the Statist Democrats: " The CBO has scored the bill at $1.055 trillion [which] does not take into consideration that fact that the ten-year window contains ten years of revenue and only three to eight years of major payouts –- meaning that the bill will bleed red ink [in subsequent years."

Admission 2: The only Americans not required to join the national health care program are -- wait for it -- members of Congress. Democrats are so certain that their own health would be endangered that they want no part of the disastrous Rube Goldberg contraption they've created.

And the SEIU appears to be one of the worst at this practice. Aside from being a major supporter of the far left Democrat agenda, it is tied to ACORN, the sleazy crew of community agitators. So the act of skirting ethical, legal and moral roadblocks wouldn't appear to be virgin territory for this lot.

The Rank Hypocrisy of the SEIU

The SEIU argues on its website that 401(K) plans are bad for workers. It claims that defined benefit funds are superior tools to assure workers' pensions. It would seem reasonable that the SEIU, then, would ensure that its 2 million members would benefit from generous, well-funded pensions.

But that is not the case -- at least for rank-and-file union members. ATR reports that:

• In 2006, the average SEIU members' pension plan was only 82% funded with assets of about $19,000 per person. • Separate funds for employees of the SEIU were 105% funded, with about $85,000 per person. • And funds covering SEIU officers and employees were 123% funded, holding roughly $80,000 per person.

However, only ten years earlier, in 1996, the SEIU National Industry Pension Fund possessed nearly 110% of the funds it would need for all of its pension obligations.

The Reason for the Disconnect Between Union Bosses and Members

So why are the union bosses' pension plans overfunded at 123% and the rank & file union members plans are near "endangered status" at 82%?

While the union blames market conditions, actual fund performance metrics demonstrate that this is not the case. It appears, instead, that the playing field has been tilted to reward the union bosses and union employees at the expense of the rank-and-file.

The problem exists not only in the SEIU's national plans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed that 13 SEIU local pension plans were less than 80% funded. Six were less than 65% funded.

For example, the Massachusetts Service Employees Pension Fund fell from nearly 110% to 70% funded in 10 years; and the SEIU 1199 Upstate Pension Fund fell from 115% to 75% since its inception in 1999.

To regain some semblance of fiscal stability, the SEIU has wagered heavily on forcing other employees to help fund its drying pension reserves. That was the motivation behind the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) ("Card Check"), a major Democrat initiative for 2009, and one on which the SEIU spent tens of millions of its members' money.

Since Card Check is in serious trouble with lawmakers, state-run health care would be a suitable alternative.

• The public option could force hospital and other health care workers into underfunded pensions, putting their retirements at risk • The average union pension has resources to cover only 62% of what is owed to participants • Less than one in every 160 union-represented workers is covered by a union pension with required assets • The PBGC already supports upwards of 30,000 pension plans • Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the governmental pension insurer, will assume $86.7 billion in liabilities by 2015 • The PBGC limits the benefits in multi-employer plans to $13,000 a year per retiree, compared with roughly $52,000 for single-employer plans. • In 2007, the PBGC reported a deficit of $955 million, a $216 million increase from the previous year • In July, the PBGC agreed to take on $6.2 billion in pension liabilities from bankrupt auto supplier Delphi Corp

Socialed medicine is a Democrat payoff to union bosses, who fear what will happen when the massive pension disparity between workers and bosses becomes widely known.

State-run health care is a boondoggle, pure and simple, and it is designed to reward the SEIU. And it is equally certain that it will crush taxpayers under the weight of unfunded pension liabilities.

Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson on Wednesday revealed that the Senate bill's excise tax on "Cadillac" plans "targets a lot of Chevy plans as well." The tax follows a formula based on the consumer price index plus 1%. But if medical costs and insurance premiums rise significantly higher than the CPI — a near sure thing — a lot more plans get taxed.

Reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, a measure to soak the rich will end up drowning Joe Sixpack. -- IBD

Friday, October 30, 2009

We've seen the pictures. We've seen the videos. Now we're finally going to see the Hennessey HPE700 Camaro in person when it makes its official debut at SEMA next week. There's a lot to love with Hennessey's halo musclecar, starting with the LS9 V8 from the ZR1 packing 725 horsepower and 741 lb.-ft. torque (up from the initial figures, 705 and 717 respectively).

Those numbers are good for a 0-60 time of just 3.5 seconds, and the trip back to a complete stop takes just 104 feet thanks to 15-inch Brembo brakes. Then there's the subtle Cam-Aero carbon fiber body kit that adds a front splitter, side skirts, rear bumper, and a diffuser, with the look is finished off with a set of Hennessey's three-piece, 20-inch wheels...

I tried to order the 22-inch spinners with dollar-signs, but my credit-card got rejected.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee had steered targeted appropriations called earmarks to clients of a now-defunct lobbying firm—PMA—and received contributions from the firm and its clients.

The names of defense subcommittee chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., and Democratic members Jim Moran of Virginia and Peter Visclosky of Indiana had previously surfaced in connection with the inquiry.

...The Pentagon budget panel had such an allure for Kaptur—who represents a Toledo-anchored Rust Belt district—that in 2005 she gave up her party's top seat on the agriculture subcommittee to claim a rare open seat on Murtha's subcommittee. She would have become one of a dozen Appropriations subcommittee chairmen had she stayed put.

...The most prominent lawmaker under investigation, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has been interviewed about his personal finances, the document showed... Earlier this month, the committee announced it authorized nearly 150 subpoenas in the Rangel investigation, interviewed 34 witnesses, produced 2,100 pages of transcripts, reviewed and analyzed more than 12,000 pages of documents and held more than 30 meetings.

The Justice Department often asks the committee to suspend its work when prosecutors are looking at the same allegations. The document said this occurred in the case of Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., whose finances came under scrutiny some three years ago.

Subpoenas were authorized to the Justice Department and National Security Agency for intercepted communications in an inquiry involving Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif...

Aren't you relieved that Nancy Pelosi (D-Marxist) "drained the swamp" and eradicated the "culture of corruption" back in 2006?

Bernard Madoff was apparently convinced that it never even occurred to Securities and Exchange Commission staff he was running a Ponzi scheme, despite the agency's numerous probes of his business... Madoff says he had the impression that "it never entered the SEC's mind that it was a Ponzi scheme."

Madoff confided that he didn't bring an attorney with him when he testified in an inquiry by the SEC's enforcement division because he believed he didn't need one — and he was trying to fool the government investigators into thinking he had nothing to hide.

...Kotz's report of his investigation, made public in early September, painstakingly detailed how the agency's investigations of Madoff were bungled, with disputes among inspection staffers over the findings, lack of communication among SEC offices in various cities and repeated failures to act on credible complaints from outsiders forming a sea of red flags...

WASHINGTON – The ABC affiliate here is airing a two-part [Tim: two-part -- get it??] series that takes a close — and unobscured — look at breast self-exams. The series is airing during the fall "sweeps" period critical for a TV station's ad revenue, prompting concern by a parental watchdog group. But WJLA insists it's not just a naked attempt to boost the ratings.

The two segments include clinical demonstrations of self-exams, and the breasts of the two volunteers are not blurred. They were to air during the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts Thursday and Friday.

WJLA officials said the segments are providing an important service because many women don't know how to properly check their breasts...

In the interest of decorum, I won't relay Tim's advice for females in his neighborhood.

He asked to buy a box of lemon cookies. When the mother turned around, he grabbed their cash box -- which contained $300 -- and fled.

The suspect was described as "a white male with dirty blonde hair between the ages of 25-35, approximately 5’8 and 170 pounds, wearing blue jeans, a denim coat and a baseball hat."

The little girl -- a first year Girl Scout -- was heartbroken. The suspect was never identified.

Earlier this year Idaho high school students visited Washington and carried with them a petition. The students -- fearful of massive deficit spending -- called for a balanced budget.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, President Obama's 2009 budget triples the annual deficit: the record setting figure is $1.9 trillion. His claim about cutting the deficit in half in a few years is a fairy tail -- like "slashing prices" by 50 percent the day after you’ve doubled them.

And the administration blatantly fibs, stating that tax increases will not affect 95 percent of taxpayers. New taxes on energy -- under the fraudulent "cap-and-trade" regime -- will force every business in America to raise its prices. Taxpayers will be wounded... directly and indirectly.

The President also appears close to implementing socialized medicine, a failure everywhere it's been tried -- into the Statists' plans. As for the $45 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities represented by Medicare and Medicaid? On that subject, Obama is utterly silent.

Obama and the rest of the Democrats want to tell you how much energy you can use (smart grids that can automatically shut off your air conditioner), whether you can give money to charities and which kinds of toilets you can buy.

Even ignoring his oppressive energy taxes, every dollar of Obama's new debt means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. This translates to a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of new, future taxes.

The tax burden each family of four can expect? $163,000. Let me repeat that: $163,000 for each and every tax-paying household in America.

Your children... my children... our grandchildren... are all slaves to the Obama budget. Because Barack Obama and his comrades in Congress are ideologues. They could care less about the economy.

They're beholden to ACORN, the SEIU, the ACLU and trial lawyers of every vintage and variety.

As subscribers to a failed ideology, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the radical Statists are consigning our descendants to slavery. Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts. Toddlers. Infants. The unborn.

Let me be the first to apologize to your kids for not handing off a better future than we had.